St. Andrew's Cathedral

We got lucky with the rain today. It started to sprinkle as we got out of the car at St Andrews and so we decided to visit the museum. It rained while we were in the museum and after a perfect amount of time, stopped raining so we could venture outside without getting wet. As we finished, and were walking back to the car, the rain started again. So very thoughtful of Mother Nature to provide us with such a wonderful window of opportunity. The Cathedral of St Andrew is a ruined Roman Catholic cathedral in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. It was built in 1158 and became the center of the Medieval Catholic Church in Scotland as the seat of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and the Bishops and Archbishops of St Andrews. It fell into disuse and ruin after Catholic mass was outlawed during the 16th-century Scottish Reformation. It is currently a monument in the custody of Historic Environment Scotland. The ruins indicate that the building was approximately 390 ft long, and is the largest church to have been built in Scotland. Today, there remains the square tower, 108 feet high, and the quire, of very diminutive proportions. On a plan of the town from about 1531, a chancel appears, and seals affixed to the city and college charters bear representations of other buildings attached. To the east is an even older religious site, the Church of St Mary on the Rock, the Culdee house that became a Collegiate Church.

 Work began on the new cathedral in 1158 and continued for over a century. The west end was blown down in a storm and rebuilt between 1272 and 1279. The Cathedral was finally completed in 1318 and featured a central tower and six turrets; of these remain two at the east and one of the two at the western extremity, rising to a height of 100 feet. On the 5th of July it was consecrated in the presence of King Robert I, who, according to legend, rode up the aisle on his horse.

 The museum occupies parts of the east and south ranges of what were originally the cathedral's priory, where the Augustinian canons who served the cathedral lived. Most of the stonework on show in the museum has been unearthed in or around the cathedral itself, and it ranges in age from the Pictish era of the 6-900s through the medieval period to the Reformation of 1560, and beyond. It is the broad timescale of the collection which makes St Andrews Cathedral Museum such a special place.

But without doubt the finest single item on display at the museum, and one of the finest examples of early medieval sculpture in Europe, is the St Andrews Sarcophagus. Fragments of this were unearthed when a grave was being dug near St Rule's Tower in 1833 and a subsequent search revealed larger pieces. There are no historical records of who was buried in the sarcophagus, but art-historical research suggests that it dates from the mid 700s, and it is therefore likely to be the last resting place of King Oengus (or Onuist), son of Fergus (or Uurguist), who is thought to have died in St Andrews in 761. It is believed that the sarcophagus was initially on display in a church or mausoleum on the site, before being buried some time later. The quality and detail of the carving is simply magnificent.